


Wednesday's Child

by bibielizabeth



Category: Doom Patrol (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Cliff saves the day with redneck engineering, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Larry is bad at seduction, Non-MCU Norse gods, Rated T for swearing, So many zip ties, Squirrel with a potty mouth, Team as Family, The gang goes to Asgard, this fic has it all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 15:35:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 19,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20137792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bibielizabeth/pseuds/bibielizabeth
Summary: Jane realizes every shitty thing that has ever happened to her has happened on a Wednesday and ends up in Asgard trying to do something about it. Everyone else has opinions on her endeavor and follows her. As with all Doom Patrol episodes, equal parts hilarity and self-discovery ensue.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is not an MCU crossover fic. Norse gods referenced are intended to be the DC universe version of the real thing.
> 
> Takes place some time after Vic moved into the manor and before the trip to the white space in season 1.

_Monday's child is fair of face,_  
_Tuesday's child is full of grace,_  
_Wednesday's child is full of woe,_  
_Thursday's child has far to go,_  
_Friday's child is loving and giving,_  
_Saturday's child works hard for a living,_  
_And the child born on the Sabbath day,  
_ _Is bonny and blithe and good and gay._

\-- Nursery Rhyme

Larry knew something was wrong the moment his alarm went off.

It was Wednesday. His alarm never woke him on Wednesdays. Jane always did; well, not on purpose. It was a Wednesday when the shitshow in the town went down and the Chief disappeared later that night, a Wednesday when Jane had left the manor in a fit of rage for the first time all those years ago, and probably a Wednesday (or several Wednesdays) when whatever happened to make her… well, when that happened to her. Jane started every Wednesday bright and early with plates smashed against the walls of her room as she sobbed and screamed, waking up the whole manor. But apparently not this Wednesday.

Somewhere inside him, the negative spirit stirred. It must have noticed too.

“You want to get this one or should I?” Larry asked, silently praying for another hour of sleep.

The spirit stopped stirring.

_Well then, fuck you too, _ Larry thought as he got out of bed and started to wind his bandages. 15 minutes later he peeped his head into the hallway. Cliff was already at Jane’s door with a plate full of peanut butter sandwiches, and Vic was standing next to him in nothing but his pajama bottoms. Rita was doing the same thing Larry was - peeping from behind her door to watch the scene, her nightly face mask still applied. It wasn’t pleasant waking up to breaking china every Wednesday at dawn but it turned out _ not _ waking up to breaking china was even more unnerving for everyone in the manor.

“Jane?” said Cliff, “I’m back, and I’ve got peanut butter sandwiches. And they even come on a plate you can smash if you want to. All you have to do is unjam the slot so we can get them to you.”

“Or unlock the door,” added Vic.

“She’s not gonna unlock the door, you idiot,” said Cliff.

“What are you, the Jane whisperer?” retorted Vic.

Rita gave an exasperated sigh from her doorway. “Maybe this is all much ado about nothing. Perhaps she simply… forgot to get new plates this week.”

“Mrs. Potts always comes out and supplies the plates for her to smash, so whatever’s wrong could be preventing Jane from switching people,” said Larry as he stepped out to join them.

“Wait, she has a personality that just… makes plates?” asked Vic.

“Well, not just plates,” said Larry. “Mugs, sugar bowls, ceramics in general.”

“She has a personality whose only superpower is to create ceramics she can smash, and she named it Mrs. Potts?” said Vic incredulously.

“Look, the plates aren’t the important thing right now, ok?” said Cliff angrily. “Right now what’s important is she’s not smashing them and way more important, the door is locked and the slot’s jammed so whatever she’s doing she doesn’t want the people that give a shit about her to know about it.”

“Well if you’re truly that concerned, Cliff, why haven’t you simply punched through whatever’s sealing the slot?” asked Rita. “Or you, Vic - couldn’t you, I don’t know, laser vision the hinges or something?”

Vic and Cliff glanced at each other.

“You don’t want to violate her privacy.” said Larry, who took advantage of his bandages to give them all an unseen eye roll. “Look, Vic, I know you have good reasons to value privacy, and Cliff, you don’t want to alienate Jane, but when someone’s acting like a child you treat them like a child.”

“Well then it’s a good thing Jane’s not a fucking child then, huh Larry.” spat Cliff, who started hammering on the door and shouting, “Jane! Jane for fuck’s sake just open the goddamned door!”

Larry passed out. When he came too, Rita had joined the others and all of them were staring through an open doorway.

Larry got up, dusted off his jacket, said a private “thank you” to the negative spirit and joined them. Inside the room was a neat circle of runes burned onto the floor. Everything that overlapped with the circle, from the bed to the rug to the small stack of plates, had been cut clean through, and the part of it that would have been inside the circle had vanished completely. This also applied to the ceiling. It was as if some sort of cosmic hole punch had cut into the room and stopped at the floor.

“Well fuck.” said Cliff.

“Copy that,” said Vic as he crouched down next to the runes.

“Better not touch them,” said Larry, “don’t want what happened to the plates to happen to you.”

“Grid just needed a closer look at the symbols on the outside. Looks like they’re old Norse runes.”

“Ah fuck, did she piss off Thor or something?” asked Cliff.

“You’re not far off.” said Vic, “Most of them look like some kind of coordinates but the big text here says, ‘Your challenge is accepted, daughter of Odin’s day.’”

Something stirred in Larry’s memory. A night school undergraduate class a million years ago. A drawing of a snake eating its tail on the chalkboard. A grad student gesticulating wildly, chalk in his hand, dangerously cute dimple on his cheek. Larry shook his head and said, “Or she was born on a Wednesday, but either way we might be dealing with Norse gods here. This must be what it looks like when someone’s been taken across the bifrost.”

“What on earth are you talking about, Larry?” huffed Rita.

“A college degree looked really good on an application to the space program, once upon a time. The only thing that fit the liberal arts requirement and my schedule was Norse mythology 101.”

“Great, I dropped out in eleventh grade. Wanna fill us in on whatever this bifrost shit is, Larry?” said Cliff.

“It’s how the gods got between Asgard where they lived and Midgard where we live. It’s what the ancient Norse thought rainbows were.”

“Thought correctly, apparently,” said Rita. “Well then. Anyone have any bright ideas on how we might… open another pifrost and go fetch her back?”

“Bifrost,” said Larry. “Vic, anything else going on with those runes?”

“They’re definitely radiating some kind of magic. Not a type that’s been catalogued by the Justice League yet, though, so I couldn’t tell you what it does. But it’s also fading. It’ll be gone in an hour or two.”

Cliff crumpled up a piece of paper from the dresser and tossed it in the circle. It bounced and rolled before it settled on the ground inside it. He put one foot inside the runes, then his whole body.

“Must be a one-time thing,” said Vic.

“Or,” said Rita, her finger on her chin, her eyes on the hole in the ceiling, “it’s missing a crucial ingredient.”

Cliff and Larry realized what she meant simultaneously. Cliff turned to Vic.

“Got a sprinkler in there somewhere, Inspector Gadget? We need a rainbow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mrs. Potts is not a DC canonical Crazy Jane personality. I just thought it'd be funny if Jane had a personality who could only make plates.


	2. Chapter 2

Ultimately Cliff hooked up the garden hose from the bathroom sink to the bed frame with the help of half of a bag of zip ties. As he admired his handiwork, he knew that somewhere out there, his dad was looking down on him, proud beyond words at this possibly dangerous masterpiece of redneck engineering he’d cooked up.   
  
“Ready everybody?” he asked.

Vic eyed the rune circle nervously and said, “Don’t you all think we should take some more time to learn about what we’ll find on the other side?”

“You said yourself the magic’s going to fade soon,” said Larry, “plus the sun’s going to move behind that tree at some point. We should try as soon as we can.”

“Not like I’d remember any of briefing anyway,” added Cliff, “I’m more of a movies-and-tv guy.”

“Fine, I’ll call Hollywood and tell them to make a big budget blockbuster movie series about all the Norse gods,” said Vic. “And I’ll say to make the gods all big damn superheroes so you don’t fall asleep.”

Cliff laughed and said, “Not in this universe pal. Ok, Larry. Let’er rip.”

Larry held down the handle enough for a fine mist to fill the room. Almost immediately the sunlight turned it into a rainbow and the runes on the floor began to glow.

“Brains before beauty, Cliff,” said Rita.

“Stopped being funny in the nineties, Rita,” said Cliff as he tentatively placed a foot inside the circle. It vanished behind a curtain of multicolored light. Cliff looked back at the room, took a breath (or made his voice sound like he did), and disappeared behind the rift.

Asgard was… bright. Every building was made from crystals that shimmered in the very strong sun and made cascades of rainbows. Vic and Rita shielded their eyes and Larry readjusted his goggles. Cliff turned a knob on the side of his head. Robot bodies had their perks.

A door opened on one of the buildings and a magnificently tall woman with a long flowing mane of what looked like literally golden hair strode toward them.

“Welcome visitors of Midgard! My name is Sif, daughter of Wealtheow. Take these glasses. They help with the light adjustment for you in our world or for us in yours.” She proffered Vic a pair designed to cover only one eye. “Victor, son of Silas, you can use my father in law’s glasses.”

Larry stepped forward and gave a short bow. “Good morning, Lady Sif. We’re here to look for a friend of ours who passed this way, perhaps you’ve seen her? She goes by--”

“Jane of Many Names, daughter of Gina and bearer of the curse and blessing of Odin’s day, yes.”

“Wait, the curse of Odin’s day? What’s that? And where is she?” asked Cliff.

Sif gave the sort of smile a mother gave to a child who was about to learn their dog was going to live on a farm upstate, and gestured down the road behind her. “Please, walk with me. We have much to discuss and I will take you to your friend.”

They all gave each other the conventional quick glance, the conventional “fuck it, it’s not weirder than anything else we’ve done” shrug, and the conventional purposeful stride forward.

“You must have many questions, children of Midgard.” Sif started.

“Not as many as you’d think, Lady Sif. You could say we’re among Midgard’s… stranger children. But first, where are you taking us?”

“To Valhalla, where Jane of Many Names prepares for battle.”

Larry stopped dead in his tracks. “Not… but Jane didn’t die in battle. She can’t be there. She’s still alive, isn’t she?”

“Worry not,” said Sif, gently urging them forward, “Jane of Many Names is quite alive. But she has challenged Odin to repeal his curse, and thus must best him in armed combat.”

“And this curse you keep speaking of?” asked Rita.

“Every Odin’s day, the allfather chooses a newborn to carry his blessing and his curse. They become destined for great acts of heroism, but also for many great sorrows. Those sorrows are usually on Odin’s day, a remnant of the magic.”

“Odin’s day?” said Cliff, “Is that like national glitter day or something, one of those stupid holidays nobody knows about?”

Larry replied, “When ‘Odin’ made the jump from Old Norse to English it picked up a letter and became ‘Woden.’ Woden’s day. The day before Thor’s Day.”

It was Cliff’s turn to stop dead in his tracks. A vivid memory of Mrs. Pulaski showing his parents his spelling test, “wenzday” circled in red, and a subsequent dyslexia diagnosis burned through him in righteous indignation.

“THAT’S WHY THERE’S SO MANY STUPID LETTERS IN WEDNESDAY?” he exclaimed.

Sif, with infinite patience, gently pressed on Cliff’s back to urge him forward. Cliff got the feeling that underneath her perfect hostess face she was eager to get rid of them.

“What’s this about Jane going into armed combat, Sif?” asked Vic.

“The only way to break Odin’s curse and blessing is to best him in combat, which I believe she asked for early this morning. I believe it was, ‘Wednesday you little bitch, I wanna fuck up whatever asshole shat you into the world to shit on me every fucking week.’ And so Odin granted her wish and--” Sif chuckled a bit. “Well, I suppose there is a first time for everything, but suffice to say her chances aren’t good.”

There was uncomfortable silence for a moment.

“What happens if Jane loses?” asked Larry.

“She dies and joins the feast in Valhalla until Ragnarok calls her to battle the last time.”

It was times like this Cliff sorely missed being able to roll his eyes. “So let me get this straight,” he said, “Jane has this woowoo spell on her that makes every Wednesday of her life absolute hell, and she has to fight a literal god to get rid of it, and in exchange she gets, what did you say? Heroism?”

“Yes. If Jane wanted to, she could become the greatest hero the world has ever known. Look back in your history books and you’ll notice more than a few great names were born on Odin’s days.”

“Jesus Christ, first Mr. Nobody then Odin. Are there any magic beings out there that aren’t complete fucknuggets?” said Cliff.

“Jane has--” started Sif.

“Jane didn’t ask for any of this. Isn’t the whole point of being a hero that it’s something you’re supposed to choose for yourself?”

“Hm. You are wise, Clifford son of Cletus,” said Sif as they came up on an absolutely gigantic, magnificent hall stretching in both directions as far as the eye could see. “Perhaps you should take your grievance to my father in law.”

“Don’t think I fuckin’ won’t,” said Cliff.

A door appeared in front of him. Sif looked at it with a bit of surprise before saying, “If you wish, you can find him through this door at the head of the mead hall. As for the rest of you, you will find Jane through that door, training for battle,” said Sif, indicating another fresh door in the wall, “and I am afraid this is where I leave you.”

Sif paused, as if she was choosing her next words carefully.

“I’m sure the purpose of your visit is to take Jane home with you in cowardice rather than to prepare her for battle. I can’t say I blame you; her odds of winning are infinitesimal. I tried myself to stress them to her before she accepted this challenge. However, if you are unsuccessful… it is my wish she gives Odin something to think on.”

“Thank you, Lady Sif,” said Larry, “we’ll take it from here.”

Sif bowed, and disappeared through a third door in Valhalla, which vanished as soon as she stepped through it.

Cliff knew he should go with the others and find Jane. He knew his priority should be getting her to safety. But then, from the other side of the door, he heard a roaring, “Ohoho, Clifford, son of Cletus, you seek an audience with me?” To which Cliff replied a muttered a, “Oh it’s fucking  _ on _ , you evil Santa,” and promptly disappeared through the door to meet Odin.

Cliff could never remember what happened immediately afterward. The next thing he knew he was soaring through the air with an “AAAAAAHHHHH!” and crashing into the nearest wall of the building immediately outside of Valhalla. And then he was... rolling? Back toward the hall. Vic, Larry, and Rita all looked down at Cliff… compressed into a ball, with only his eyes peeping through to look back at them.

“Well, that sucked,” said now spherical Cliff.


	3. Chapter 3

One of the first things Rita learned in acting lessons was how to suppress a laugh. It was inevitable, her teacher had said, that at some point, something funny was going to happen right when you needed to sob over your dead lover on stage. And in that moment, if you felt like you were positively going to burst with giggles in front of the audience, all you needed to do was look down at your shoes and it would kill any laughter like a magic trick.

Rita decided not to look at her shoes.

Larry followed soon after. He let out a chuckle, which became a chortle, which became a guffaw as he knelt on the ground, absolutely wheezing at what must have been the funniest thing he’d ever seen in his life. Vic wasn’t far behind him, gradually leaning for support on the wall of Valhalla, a tear escaping underneath his protective glasses as he said, “Grid. Grid please get a picture of this, so I can remember it forever.

“Yeah yeah, laugh it up assholes,” said Cliff, but with more embarrassment than anger.

After a solid incoherent minute, Larry got to his feet, hand clutching his side. “Well,” he said, “I guess we’d better find Jane.”

“Yes I… I suppose we should,” wheezed Rita, who hadn’t laughed like that since before her mother warned her how many wrinkles laughing made. “Thank you Cliff for *snk* getting the ball rolling.”

Everyone but Cliff snorted.

“When all of this is over I am putting a flaming bag of dog shit outside every one of your bedroom doors,” said Cliff bitterly.

“Well,” said Vic as he opened their door to Valhalla, “in the meantime. Let’s *snk* roll out!”

Rita wasn’t sure what to expect to see inside Valhalla. Well, that was a lie - she had been a background extra early in her career in  _ Beowulf, Soldier of Justice _ , a schlocky flop about vikings saving pretty blonde maidens from papier mache monsters, and in it she had sat on a set with long tables full of giant beer steins and benches full of actors pretending to be drunken buffoons (and many not pretending). They had mentioned Valhalla in the script as some sort of cosmic eternal beer hall, and so she was quite surprised when instead she walked into an open-air arena with enough seats for at least 50,000 people. In the absence of the crystal buildings the light was normal here, so Rita removed her glasses and gawked at the scene.

“If Valhalla has to entertain and wine and dine thousands of warriors,” said Larry as if reading her thoughts, “I guess it makes sense to contain more than just a mead hall.”

Everywhere around them big burly men were sparring with every imaginable weapon. All the way on the other side of the arena, a crowd had formed a circle and as Vic, Larry, Cliff and Rita approached they could hear a familiar voice coming from its center.

“Come on you pieces of shit, is that all you got!?” shouted what sounded like Hammerhead, as three 250 pound shirtless men attempted to tackle her. Within seconds, all three were sailing over the heads of everyone in the crowd as Hammerhead hurled them away from her, one breaking his neck as he landed. From behind, a group of what looked like medieval knights tried to charge her. But with a shimmer, Lucy Fugue said, “Nice try” and a bolt of electricity cooked all of them in their armor.

Jane had clearly been at this all morning and Rita was about to wonder where all the other bodies were before someone held out a hand to the poor fellow that had broken his neck. He took it, got to his feet, and snapped his head back into place. Of course. All of these men were dead and in the Scandanavian version of heaven. They couldn’t die  _ again _ .

The team all stood there for a moment, watching kill after kill after kill before they had to dodge a bolt of lightning and they were finally spotted.

“What a magnificent match!” shouted a man who appeared to be carved from a block of solid muscle, “why, I’ve never been so challenged in a thousand years!”

“Fuck off, Broseph,” said Jane, “and all the rest of you. I need to practice on my own since not a single fucking one of you can last longer than 3 seconds with me.”

“You--” he started angrily.

With a shimmer, Silvertongue said, “What part of FUCK OFF did you miss?”

FUCK lodged in his throat. OFF lodged in his crotch. Every other man nearby suddenly squeezed their legs together instinctively before walking away.

“What the fuck are you all doing here?” said Jane.

“What are WE doing here? What are YOU doing here, Jane?” shouted Cliff, “Larry! Roll be back, I can’t see Jane’s face.”

Jane took one look at Cliff and roared with laughter.

“Oh ha ha, yeah it’s so fuckin’ funny that your opponent tomorrow already did this to me, huh? And that he could do it to you?” spat Cliff.

Jane, somehow, laughed harder. Rita decided to look at her shoes this time.

“But *ahem* seriously Jane,” said Vic as he badly suppressed a laugh of his own, “this Odin guy is bad news. We need to leave now.”

Jane sighed off her last chuckle and shook her head. “No fucking way,” she said as she walked over to a rack of swords and started testing their weight, “That asshat has too much to answer for.”

“No argument here. The man is a douche canoe,” said Cliff, “but he’s literally a god. There is no winning this.”

“You know he’s been at it for 6,000 years?” said Jane as she eyed a particularly deadly looking dagger. “6,000 years of little kids, doing nothing at all and then BAM! Ripped from their perfectly happy destinies because somebody’s got to save the world or whatever, with no thank you but a shit sandwich to eat on Wednesdays. Well it stops here. He’s hurt enough people. Odin is going down.”

“Jane, listen to yourself,” said Larry, “you’re talking about killing a god. It is a literal impossibility. You’re being set up to fail.”

“Maybe you’re right,” said Jane, “Maybe he can’t die. But I’ve got 64 different powers to test against that theory first.”

Rita put on her winningest smile and most conciliatory tone.

“ _ Jane _ ,” she smiled, positively oozing compassion and patience.

“ _ Rita _ ,” said Jane, matching her in tone in mocking imitation.

Rita paused as a thought hit her.  _ Why am I doing this? _ Realizing the answer was “Because I feel I should” and not “Because she’ll listen to me,” Rita added, “Best of luck,” and started heading back the way they came. She got in a solid three strides before Vic blocked her way.

“Where are you going, Rita?” He said.

“Well you heard her. She’s determined to complete her little suicide mission no matter what we say, so why are we still here?”

“Because we’re her friends,” said Vic, exasperated.

“Bully for you. You can sit in the stands and watch her get pummeled then.”

“Rita--” started Larry.

“Oh don’t tell me you’re with them,” said Rita to Larry, “you and I have known Jane for over fifty years. Has anyone other than the Chief ever talked her down from something she’d set her mind to?”

Larry hesitated, then grudgingly admitted, “No.”

“Precisely,” said Rita, “so come on. One of my pictures is on Turner Classic Movies at 11:00 and if we hurry we can still catch it, then come back to collect Jane’s lifeless body tomorrow, like the good friends we are.”

“Wow, fuck all of you,” said Jane, “but Rita’s right. Go home. I’ve got this.”

“Like hell you do!” shouted Cliff.

There was a shimmer, and Hammerhead said, “Shut up, Wilson” and kicked Cliff into the stands, where he landed with a scream and a, “Shit!”

Vic’s eyes lit up. “Listen, Jane--”

“HAMMERHEAD”

“Listen, Hammerhead. Are you sure you can beat Odin? I mean, you can’t even beat us.”

An extremely tense pause followed.

“Oh I can’t?” said Hammerhead dangerously, “Do--”

Vic surprised her by grabbing her by the throat and choke slamming her into the ground.

“No, I don’t think you can,” he said with a grin.

There was a shimmer, and Flit disappeared under his grip, reappeared behind him and gave the back of his knees a sharp kick, bringing him to the ground before she reappeared in front of him, but Vic was ready. He armed his sonic cannon in the meantime and the moment she reappeared, gave her a quick blast, knocking her to the ground. There was a shimmer as Jane got up and said, “Now you’ve done it. You need to get the fuck out of here before one of me kills you, Cyborg.”

“No,” said Vic as he got up, “because you’re not ready for this.”

Vic pointed his finger laser at the dirt and drew circle 20 feet in diameter. “If you can beat every one of us by throwing us out of this circle, we’ll leave you alone. But if we throw you out, you have to come home with us.”

Rita closed her eyes, sighed, and let a weariness of too many years of putting up with exactly this sort of bullshit wash over her. “We?” she said, her voice pained.

“Yes, we,” said Vic. “Because when you are on a team, you do what you have to to protect your teammates.”

Rita let out a humorless laugh at the word “team” before pursing her lips and looking at Jane. They weren’t a team. At best they were a collection of dysfunctional adults thrown together because no one else could stand them. But Jane didn’t deserve to die from her own stupidity either. If nothing else Rita owed that to the Chief. “Fine,” she said, stripping off her cardigan and hanging it from a weapons rack, “but you owe me. All of you do.”

“Larry?” said Vic expectantly.

“I’m useless here,” said Larry stepping outside the circle, “but I’m pretty sure the negative spirit is down. Anybody here got a cha--”

Before he could finish, the negative spirit was out of Larry’s body and floating next to them inside the circle.

“Ok,” said Jane, cracking her knuckles, “Let’s do this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, that trick about looking at your shoes when you're about to laugh is a real thing. Give it a try if you ever have a case of the giggles at a bad time.


	4. Chapter 4

Sentient architecture isn’t as rare as most people think.

99% of the time if a person assumes a house is “haunted,” it’s more likely just tired of Greg’s weed habit stinking up the place and it’s looking for new tenants. Most aren’t particularly powerful; just slammed cabinets and well-timed creaky noises, an interrupted circuit here and there. But there are notable exceptions. Danny the Street is one of them. Valhalla is another. And at the moment, Valhalla was  _ pissed _ .

You see, Valhalla had been just going about her business, supplying infinite mead for her eternal mead hall (most powerful magic architecture needed an eternal something or other to keep it going), keeping the warriors of several millennia entertained and happy when some Midgardians… _alive_ Midgardians… had demanded entry. Valhalla considered refusing, but Lady Sif was with them and Valhalla couldn’t disappoint her, so she’d produced the appropriate door and sent them through to the arena where she’d hoped they’d pick up the other alive Midgardian and be off on their way. Well, not before producing one door to teach the particularly rude visitor a lesson. That’d teach  _ him _ to speak of the allfather that way, although she immediately felt guilty after, and had already sent a message to a dwarf that owed her a favor to come and fix him at his earliest convenience.

Then one of them had lasered a circle in her dirt in the arena. Ouch, but no serious harm done, just a scratch. Heavens knows she had worse every day in the mead hall. But then they’d begun to spar. No, spar wasn’t the right word - fight. Brutally. And with such intensity that the usual sparrers filed into the arena’s seats to watch the biggest throwdown any of them had seen since Thor had had one hundred too many and decided to see how many warriors he could take with his arms tied behind his back.

None of that had pissed Valhalla off, though. What _had_ pissed her off was that now there was a gods-damned  _ crater _ in the middle of her arena, the crater’s edges coming right up to the line of the circle that idiot had drawn. Inside was a foul-mouthed woman with too much eye shadow and a Traveller of Light. Just outside was a woman with too much lipstick and a robot boy. All Midgardians. Whatever had caused the crater had left all of them battered, singed, and out of breath.

“Jesus fuck, Katy,” muttered the woman with the eye shadow to no one in particular, “way to put the kill in overkill.”

“You ok Rita?” asked the robot boy. He was in bad shape, but as Valhalla watched his body was already quickly repairing itself.

“There are some perks of having no bones to break, Victor,” said the woman with too much lipstick, Rita apparently. “All the same I think I’ll just… lie here for a little bit, if that’s alright.”

The robot boy, Victor apparently (he didn’t look particularly victorious to Valhalla) sat up and stared at the woman in the circle. “What the fuck, Jane? It’s called sparring and not fighting for a reason.”

“Shut up, Vic,” said the woman, Jane apparently, as she got to her feet and spat blood on the ground, “you’re alive. And you’re out of the circle. Now it’s just me and you, Sparkles.”

The Traveller of Light, Sparkles apparently (goodness it had been some time since Valhalla had encountered one of his kind), looked over at Jane as he considered his options. He was cute. Valhalla thought about asking him out later before remembering she was furious at his role in making a fucking crater in her arena.

Jane shimmered and then said, “Come on, you bargain bin pokemon! Show me what you got!”

Sparkles shook his head and said (although Valhalla doubted any of the other Midgardians could hear him), “To hell with this. You’re up, Larry.” He picked up a man who looked like he’d been prepared for burial and deposited him in the crater. “Time to talk some sense into this moron,” he said before disappearing inside the man. The man, Larry apparently, stirred then sat up.

“No, not fucking Larry you goddamned coward, I want to fuck  _ you  _ up!” shouted Jane “Don’t make me get Lucy to shock your light show ass back out here!”

“Oh fuck… spirit! What the fuck, get me out of here, this is your scene” said Larry.

Jane shimmered again and began to float three feet off the ground. “Now Larry dear,” said Jane (or possibly someone else. Her voice was different.), “Are you going to be a good little boy and deposit yourself outside the circle, or will I have to throw you out?”

“Enough, Jane!” shouted Larry.

“Secretary” the woman hissed.

“I’m talking to all of you,” said Larry, “stop this idiocy and just come back with us already.”

Jane, or Secretary apparently, said, “Why? Surely what we decide to do is inconsequential to you.”

“Incons-- oh  _ fuck you _ , Jane,” shouted Larry. The woman had clearly touched a nerve, “Nothing is ever inconsequential with you, don’t you see that?”

“What on earth--”

“It was your idiot plan to go to town that got the Chief kidnapped in the first place! And because you couldn’t be bothered to tell us the donkey was a trap, we all got our first mind-fuck from Mr. Nobody! We went to Paraguay at half strength and almost got killed because Flit couldn’t be bothered to teleport twice!”

The woman glared in silence. It looked like he had touched a nerve too.

“Even stupid shit… you know it was my bus you spray painted for your stupid field trip in the first place. My plants you dumped in a heap behind the house to clear it out. Every time you make a decision it’s the rest of us that just pay, and pay, and pay for it because you can’t think of anything but yourself. What the hell are we going to tell the Chief when he gets back and you’re dead, hm? ‘Oh Jane? She went on a suicide mission against a literal god and we couldn’t stop her.’ The only fucking reason I’m here is because I do  _ not _ want to have that conversation and see his face fall when he realizes he wasn’t here to save you from your own bullshit  _ again _ . So stop it with this dumbass power roll call and just _ leave with us already! _ ”   


The woman activated her telekinetic powers to raise a massive section of earth behind her, obviously planning to throw it at Larry.

“Shit.” said Larry.

_ Ow! _ thought Valhalla, and with that she had had enough. Valhalla replaced all the dirt in the crater with a  _ whumph _ and deposited the woman with too many names in a locked room (Odin would not permit her removal) and the rest of them (even the rude spherical one) outside of it.

She made a note to have a word with Lady Sif on the nature of the guests she invited into Valhalla. She could decide to let anyone in, but Valhalla had standards. And this idiot patrol was not up to snuff.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Katy is listed on DC wiki's as a pyrokinetic but in the show she seems to be a lot more powerful than that and I figured her volatility meant she probably could make an instant fiery crater in the ground if she was sufficiently pissed.
> 
> The Secretary doesn't have any canonical powers as far as I could find, so I decided she's telekinetic, because this is my fictional universe and I can. *cackles maniacally*


	5. Chapter 5

The locked door to the room was not the problem.

Flit had tested it first thing as soon as she was locked inside. The hall seemed all too happy to let her go her own way if she wished (Jane had been briefed on the hall’s sentience earlier that morning). In fact, the first thing she did was check on Jane’s <strike>friends</strike> house mates. Vic was in a particularly graceless sprawl and Rita was feeling around in the grass for the glasses that let her see in Asgard (Jane was content just to hold her arm over her eyes). Flit only had a moment to giggle before Jane took the helm and asked if they were ok.

“We’re fine, Jane,” said Larry, in the stilted tone of someone who had recently said something he regretted but couldn’t bring himself to apologize for it yet.

“Good. Head up that hill and you’ll hit Heimdall’s house with the green crystal shutters overlooking a cliff. He’ll take you home.” said Jane, repeating the same instructions Odin had given her that morning, minus the, “should you wish to go home in disgrace and cowardice” he’d tacked on the end.

“Great,” said Cliff, “Now let’s go.”

“How many more ‘fuck offs’ do you all need to get that I’m not leaving.” said Jane.

Flit could tell Cliff was about to play daddy again, so she took the helm and hurried off back to the locked room before he could say anything. Flit briefly considered waiting until the proscribed combat time tomorrow morning, before deciding that was  _ boring _ and it was time to see if she could find Odin first and get things settled now now  _ now _ . She transported to over a thousand places in the massive hall searching for the mead hall where she guessed Odin would be. Among them was a library, a massage parlor, a fast food restaurant, a barbershop, a concert hall, a garden, an armory, a smithy, and a sex dungeon. Actually, it stops being a dungeon when it takes up that much square footage; a sex  _ palace. _ Flit figured it made sense that if you throw a lot of folks at peak fitness together for eternity, they’ll have a  _ lot _ of sex with each other.

Flit could feel that a lot of the others beginning to get nauseous from all the teleportation, so she pulled over in a courtyard at the foot of a tree where Jane could throw up in peace. Jane was mid-retch when she heard an oily voice say, “Fascinating.”

Jane looked up right as she vomited and ended up splattering a pair of black boots dangling from the tree. She wiped her mouth and made eye contact with what looked like a serpent transformed into a person. They were lithe and draped over a tree branch fluidly, although they were clearly agitated to have vomit on their boots. The breasts and the beard said, “don’t even bother guessing,” and the deep black suit and tiara with honest-to-god devil horns on it said, “trust me at your own risk.”

“You must be the trickster one. Lozzy or some shit, right?” said Jane.

“Loki, although if you prefer I’m also Anansi, Q, and a hundred other names,” Loki purred, “rather like you, Jane of Many Names.”

“Ok, I’m in,” said Jane who was not in the mood to beat around the tree.

“I’m sorry?” said Loki.

“You’re gonna say we want the same thing, that we both want Odin--”

Before she could finish Loki hopped down from the tree and placed a hand over her mouth.

“The hall is all ears,” Loki hissed, “if you would kindly wait just a moment, I’d like to speak in privacy.”

Hammerhead bit down on their hand, which they withdrew with a yelp.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” she said.

Loki gave her a once over, clearly considering for a moment if this was worth the trouble, before going to the trunk of the tree and drawing a door on it with the tip of their finger, which they then opened. “After you,” they said.

Jane, who was a Doom Manor inhabitant down to her bones, did the conventional glance, the conventional “fuck it, it’s not like it’s any weirder than anything else we’ve done” shrug and the conventional purposeful step forward through the door. It led to a long hallway that seemed carved into wood itself, but much larger than the tree they’d come from, and ultimately led to a branch on the largest tree Jane had ever seen. She had thought Valhalla was large but Valhalla was  _ nothing _ compared to this. Its branches seemed to literally hold up the sky, and its roots were too far below to see.

“What is this?” asked Jane.

“Yggdrasil, the tree that connects the nine realms. It’s impossibly vast and full of lots of lovely little crannies, but this is my favorite place on it.” said Loki.

Jane snorted, “Just nine realms? The Justice League’s catalogued like 36 dimensions so far, my dude. There’s a lot more than nine.”

Loki looked shocked, then a bit angry. “You know,” they said, “perhaps this was a mistake. You’re welcome to continue flitting around while Valhalla prevents you from ever getting close to my father--”

“Your  _ father? _ ” Jane started.

“My  _ adopted _ father. It’s a long story, and not at all pertinent to our situation which is that both of us would like to see him dead and neither of us have the means to accomplish the task.”

“Says you,” said Jane.

“Odin cannot die by blade, poison, lightning, fire, ice, drowning, crushing, venom, bleeding, bludgeoning, bullets, or disease,” listed Loki, “I know this because I have attempted every one of them without success.”

_ Shit _ , thought Jane.  _ That leaves… uh... _

“There is one method, however, that came close once,” said Loki, “and it’s why this is my favorite place on Yggdrasil. Look down this branch and tell me what you see.”

Jane looked, and not far down the branch were the tattered remains of… was that a…

“That rope,” said Loki with a smirk, “Has been on this tree for over six thousand years. Odin came here and hanged himself from this branch for nine days and came to the brink of death, in order to gain the wisdom of the world,” said Loki.

“Nine fucking days?” said Jane incredulously.

“Yes. I agree it’s a little long for a trial by combat, but in six thousand years nothing else has come close. In my professional immortal opinion it’s your best shot.”

“Why haven’t you tried it then?”

“You think it’s easy sneaking a rope around someone else’s neck? Besides, Odin has taken special precautions against me specifically, and he won’t go into combat against me since I’m his kin.”

Loki turned back toward a separate knot in the tree from the one they’d come from and began to walk toward it. “I need to get back to Asgard before I’m missed. Do with this information what you will and when the time comes, strike true, Jane of Many Names.”

“Wait,” said Jane, “Why are you telling me this? What did Odin do to you?”

Loki paused, and turned toward her, “My father came back from this tree with the wisdom of the entire universe in his mind. With it he has ruled wisely and well for six thousand years, but no one, not his loved ones or his advisors or anyone else, will admit that even good things come at a cost. Asgard has been shaped in Odin’s image for six thousand years. Odin’s vision for an eternal meadhall, Odin’s plans for a sparkling city of light, Odin’s taste, his kin, his every whim.”

Loki took off their tiara, and examined it as they continued.

“I know my reputation as a trickster precedes me - do you know what a trickster is, at their core? Someone who forces change on the comfortable. I cannot say whoever follows Odin will be better or worse but they will be  _ different _ . Odin has forgotten that often, especially after 6,000 years of the same, change for change’s sake is a good in its own right.”

“And here I was thinking you just hated the bastard,” said Jane.

Loki grinned wickedly as they put their tiara back on, “One motive does not necessarily preclude the other.”

“Uh huh,” said Jane, “Well, thanks. See you at the throwdown tonight?”

Loki turned and disappeared down the nook in the tree, but Jane could hear them saying as they left, “Jane, I wouldn’t miss it for all of Asgard.”


	6. Chapter 6

Vic paced furiously and ran the facts over in his mind again.

Some supernatural force had kicked them out of Valhalla and was preventing them from reentering it. Every Asgardian they had asked for help getting back inside had simply smiled and told them to “take it up with Valhalla,” whatever that meant. Blasting the wall with the sonic canon had proven a futile endeavor, as it had just repaired itself. Furthermore, Cliff was still spherical, and Jane was dead set against her own rescue, and Larry and Rita were getting that look like they were about to fuck off and get a drink and wait until everything blew over.

_ I bet Batman never has to deal with this kind of bullshit, _ thought Vic bitterly.

Rita stood up from the boulder she’d been sitting on, straightened her skirt, and gave that sort of pursed lip smile that meant she was about to say something she knew the other person would find distasteful. “Well,” she said diplomatically, “I suppose that’s that, isn’t it?”

Vic sighed vocally.  _ Here we go. _

“We’re not going home, Rita,” said Vic, “Not until we’ve got Jane with us.”

“In theory, I’m with you.” said Rita, “Jane is, for better or worse, a part of our little dysfunctional group and I don’t wish her to come to harm. In practice, she’s already very physically refused our rescue and we’ve been kicked out of the building where she’s being kept with no possibility of reentry.”

“We just need a plan,” said Vic, running his hand over the human half of his head.

“Yes, we do,” said Rita, “and I don’t see why we can’t come up with plan back at the manor, where I’m not positively baking in ethereal sunlight that I just  _ know _ is going to give me…  _ freckles. _ ” said Rita with equal parts disgust and horror.

Vic paused. Somewhere on the edges of his consciousness a plan had formed. He just needed to talk it out. “And how are we going to get back to Doom Manor, Rita?”

“Well, I’m sure our little pifrost is closed by now, so we’ll need to find that Dimehall fellow Jane mentioned to get us a new one.”

“Bifrost, Heimdall,” said Larry.

Vic could feel the pieces clicking together, “Because a bifrost can take you anywhere you want to go,” he said slowly.

“Well, yes, presumably,” said Rita.

“Even into a building you’re locked out of,” Vic said with a smile.

Rita scowled, knowing her not-so-subtle plot to go home had been foiled.

“Vic, I don’t know if--” started Larry.

“Larry, you and Rita go find Heimdall. Tell him we need a bifrost into Valhalla. Preferably directly to wherever Odin is.”

“Why are we going looking for that fucknut?” asked Cliff.

“Because we already know we can’t convince Jane to leave with us, but maybe we can convince Odin not to fight her.”

“Um, hello? What are we trying to get the whole team crumpled up like tin foil?” said Cliff incredulously.

“The difference is that I’m not going in to tell him off.”

“Yeah, you’re going in to kiss his ass,” finished Cliff.

“If it gets Jane out of this alive, you bet I am,” said Vic.

“Alright, Larry and I will go find Dimehall. What will you and Cliff do?” said Rita.

“We need to find someone to fix Cliff,” said Vic, “do you think there’s some kind of science lab or maybe a smith around here?”

“Usually the gods left all their forging and smithing up to the dwarves, who live in their own separate world” said Larry. “Looks like we’re going to need two bifrosts.”

And as if it were written in a script, there was a  _ whoosh _ and a bifrost opened up three feet away from them. Inside a glowing rune circle that had just appeared on the ground, a shimmering curtain of rainbow light parted and out stepped a stocky, bearded woman. She was wearing a stained and burned leather apron, at least a hundred metal beads in scraggly long hair and shrewd glare. “Any of you seen a metal man that’s been crushed into a ball against his will?”

Everyone looked at Cliff. “Um, what, did you think I crushed myself into a ball for fun?” he asked.

“Whatever you consensually get up to in your own time is your business,” said the dwarf with a spit on the ground, “I’m Heta, apprentice to Master smith Jyri. Valhalla’s contracted us to straighten you out.”

“I’m sorry, Valhalla like the  _ building _ called you?” said Cliff.

Heta looked at Cliff derisively, “Calling Valhalla a building is like calling Yggdrasil a tree. Now come on, the master smith is waiting. You’re lucky we had a client cancellation; it’s usually a hundred year waiting list for Jyri’s time.”

“Wait, if you could open a bifrost to us does that mean you control it too?” asked Vic.

Heta laughed, “Laddie, dwarves invented the bifrost. But we’re not your busboys. If you want your own bifrost you need to take it up with Heimdall. Speaking of, here he comes now, probably furious I’ve kept one open this long. Now, master sphere, could you  _ please come with me? _ ”

“Uhhh, you’re gonna have to roll me--” started Cliff.

“I got it,” said Vic, “Rita, Larry, the plan stays the same. You go talk to Heimdall, I’ll see if I can help the dwarves with Cliff.”

Heta gave a little chuckle and muttered “ _ help _ ” to herself under her breath as she and Vic got behind Cliff and pushed him through the bifrost. Vic knew he didn’t have to help her push Cliff through just like he didn’t have to go with her. He did it anyway because it was better than admitting to himself that he had no idea what he was doing or what he should do next.


	7. Chapter 7

As soon as the last of Vic, Heta and Cliff disappeared into the bifrost and it closed with  _ whoosh _ , Rita quickly smoothed her skirt and primped her hair. Even if this Dimehall fellow was a god, he was still a man, wasn’t he? Rita put on her winningest smile and realized the approaching god was much closer than she thought he was. He was just… tiny. Not an inch over five feet and maybe 120 pounds sopping wet. He carried a giant horn almost as big as he was strapped to his back and a divine fury in his gait.

“If your friends think they can run off without answering for what they did, oh  _ gods _ do they have another think coming, keeping a bifrost open for  _ two fucking minutes _ ” spat Heimdall.

“Hello, you must be Di--” Rita started.

“ _ Heimdall, _ we’re honored to meet you,” said Larry pointedly with a bow, “We were wondering if you could help us. The bifrost we used to come to Asgard has closed and--”

“Oh my gods,  _ you _ were the dipshits that kept a bifrost open with a garden hose for  _ an hour _ this morning!?” shouted Heimdall, “Do you have any fucking  _ idea _ how lucky we are that Asgard isn’t overrun with frost giants right now? Three out of every ten frost giant attacks come from intercepted bifrosts!”

Rita gave a gasp and put her hand to her chest, “My god,” she intoned, “I am so sorry. We had no idea. There’s so many new things here that we don’t know.”

“Don’t you try that ‘There Are Giants In The Sky’ act with me, Midgardian,” said Heimdall, pointing a finger at her angrily.

Rita giggled. “Oh D- Heimdall, you’re so funny!” she said as she took his elbow and gave her brightest smile.

“What are you doing?” said Heimdall, now looking angry  _ and _ confused.

“Oh I was just… so tell me, is it hard, managing the bifrosts and keeping the frost giants at bay?” Rita said as she batted her eyes.

“Yes it is,” said Heimdall taking his elbow back, “in fact I need to get back to it now. Have a nice life, Midgardians. Thank gods it doesn’t look like I’ll ever see you in Valhalla and good fucking  _ luck _ getting back to Midgard because I sure as shit am not lending you a bifrost.”

And with that Heimdall walked back down the street and up the hill and disappeared into the house with the green shutters, just where Jane said he lived.

“Well that could have gone better,” said Rita with a huff. Then she took out her makeup mirror and started adjusting her hair.

“Rita, what are you—“ started Larry.

“Heimdall’s still a man, isn’t he? He may be a tough nut to crack but I haven’t met a man yet who could resist me  _ forever _ .”

“Really?” said Larry matter-of-factly, “What about me?”

“You don’t count, you’re gay,” said Rita.

“Mmhmm. Rita, how many straight men do you know who casually quote broadway musicals?”

Rita hesitated, “ _ Into the Woods _ is a classic, that doesn’t mean anything.”

“Uh huh. One second,” said Larry as he took out his phone.

“What on  _ earth _ are you--”

“Wow, Asgard has great service,” said Larry as he scrolled through something on his phone. “Jane installed Grindr on here as a joke when I wasn’t looking a few months ago. Let’s see if… yep, here he is.”

Rita stared at Larry’s phone. Sure enough, there was Heimdall’s profile. His profile picture was him at Asgard Pride, covered in glitter and draped with a trans pride and a gay pride flag.

“I mean, he is literally the god of rainbows, Rita,” said Larry with a shrug.

“Well… shit,” said Rita. “In that case… alright Larry, time to step up.”

Larry took a step back. “Oh no. Nooooo no no no no.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake, Larry, you’re young-shaped and articulate and don’t smell bad. This’ll be a walk in the park.”

“No! No, I--”

“Larry, surely you’ve picked up your fair share of gentlemen in bars over the years. This is no different, and he is quite good-looking.”

“Him being good-looking has nothing to do with it!”

“So you agree he’s good-looking?”

“I-- Rita-- Look I--” Larry stammered.

Rita looked at him pointedly and waited for another excuse to bat away.

“I never picked up anybody in a bar or anywhere else, ok?” Larry forced out. “I just… the other guy always seduced me. I was always too terrified to make the first move.”

“Well Larry,” said Rita sizing him up, “Welcome to seducing men 101.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone who has a problem with trans gay Heimdall can go fuck off to the same place as the people who had a problem with black Heimdall :)


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To the less handy readers: for this chapter to make sense, you should know what a zip tie is (also known as a cable tie). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_tie

Cliff was  _ bored. _

Usually when Cliff got bored he started talking to anyone and everyone within a ten foot radius. He’d always been friendly and talkative by nature. His fifth grade teacher had called him “Chatty Cliffy,” and he hadn’t been able to shake the nickname until high school. But try as he might (and boy had he tried), the dwarves refused to give any kind of conversational input greater than two syllables. Vic had realized pretty quickly there wasn’t much he could do to help with reconstructing Cliff and had sat down with a downloaded a copy of Neil Gaiman’s  _ Norse Mythology _ , and he’d been irritated every time Cliff had interrupted him. So here he was, disassembled on a work table and trying anything he could think of to pass the time.

“1 bottle of beer on the wall, 1 bottle of beer, take it down pass it around… fuck,” Cliff sighed.

Jyri had turned out to look a lot like Heta, only with more metal beads in his hair and burns on his arms. Cliff wondered if they were related. “Heta! Get me more clamps, this fella’s coming apart at the seams,” he shouted.

“We’re out of clamps, Master Jyri. You used up the big ones to flatten his torso and the little ones to keep his fingers together.”

Jyri sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Master Cliff, has anyone ever told ye that whoever did your welding should be thrown in a forge?”

“Ha, that’ll be the Chief. Not surprising - he was watching a ‘how to weld’ video as he was putting me together. What do you think--”

“Yes, I’m not surprised. Well, we’ll just have to work a little more slowly. I’m afraid you’re going to be here a bit longer than we anticipated.”

“Wait, you need a clamp right? Could you use a ziptie?” asked Cliff.

Jyri stared at him blankly. “I’m sorry, zip tie?” he asked.

“Right jacket pocket, I should still have half a bag of’em in there left over from this morning,” said Cliff.

Jyri took out the bag and stared in confusion at the little white plastic pieces. “I don’t understand, how--”

“Take the tapered end and feed a few inches of it into the little box thingy on the other side, then try to take it apart.

Jyri followed the instructions and when he couldn’t separate them, stared agog. “I’ll be damned! Heta, come look at this!”

“In the trailer park where I used to live, the whole damn place is held together with nothing but zip ties and duct tape.”

“What’s duct tape?” asked Heta as she marvelled at her own zip tie.

If Cliff could grin, he would have.  _ So they want to talk redneck engineering? Let’s talk redneck engineering,  _ he thought. Some hours later, the dwarves and Cliff were all roaring with laughter.

“You  _ can’t  _ be serious,” said Jyri.

“I  _ am _ !” said Cliff, “I swear to you, take a grocery cart, turn it on its side over a firepit, BAM - instant grill.”

“That’s incredible,” said Heta. “What you Midgardians lack in craftsmanship you make up for in leaps and bounds in creativity.”

“Well, most of you. I’m afraid this Chief of yours who put you together had very little of either,” said Jyri.

“Yeah well, most of us can’t put together a robot at all, so I’m grateful for what I got,” said Cliff.

“But if you can’t assemble automatons, who does your cleaning and cooking and everything else you don’t want to do?” asked Heta.

“We do. Or we pay people to do it for us,” said Cliff.

Heta and Jyri became gravely silent as they contemplated this fate worse than death. After a moment Jyri said, “Heta, these zip ties are amazing but a little too small. Is there any way we can free up a few more clamps?”

“If they’re too small you can chain them together, you know,” said Cliff.

Jyri’s mouth fell open. “They  _ chain!? _ ” he said incredulously.

“Yeah, you just… ugh, Vic! Vic can you get over here for a second and show the dwarves how to chain zip ties?”

“One second, I’m almost done with the book,” said Vic as he continued to move his eye across something in the middle distance in front of him.

“Oh come on, it’ll take  _ two _ seconds,” said Cliff.

“Wait a tick - Heta, call over one of the automatons and bring over the memory transfer chips,” said Jyri.

Heta pressed a button and within three minutes what Cliff presumed was an automaton had entered the workshop. He looked like he was wearing a skintight jumpsuit and a completely blank expression but most striking was the fact he didn’t look like a robot. He looked like a person, with a face and fingers and hair, but all of it was spray-painted a sort of metallic gold. He looked like… honestly? Like a supermodel. Cliff was pretty sure he was straight but damn, if that was a robot that robot could  _ get it _ . Jyri placed something circular and black on the back of the robot’s neck and another one on Cliff’s forehead.

“Alright, in theory this should intercept the electrical impulses coming from your head and transfer them to the automaton.”

“Wait, what? In theory?”

“Oh yeah, it might also boil your brain like an egg. But I’d only put that possibility at maybe 5%. Now, try to relax.”

Cliff was absolutely  _ not _ relaxing and was in fact in the middle of a shout of “WHAT!?” when the transfer happened. The result was the “WH--” coming from Cliff’s voicebox, and the AT!?” coming from… the other body. Which was… his body now?

Cliff looked down at his hands. His now extremely acute vision could pick out the microscopically tiny hinges and metal plates, but to anybody else it looked like skin, albeit gold skin. He felt himself gasp and noted that there was air inside something like lungs. And his face was… he touched his face. It felt (Felt! He was feeling!) cold and metallic, but also pliant like skin. Skin that could move, and stretch, and smile, which Cliff was doing a lot of right now.

“This is… whoah, is that my voice??” said Cliff in a delicious baritone.

“Well, no. It’s the automaton’s. But you can borrow it for a bit.”

“I… I can…” Cliff stammered through a wave of emotion.

“And that’s the end of  _ Norse Mythology _ . Dang,” said Vic getting to his feet. “How’s Cliff doing over there?”

“Cliff is doing  _ fucking amazing right now _ , actually,” said Cliff.

“...Cliff?” said Vic sizing up Cliff’s new body.

“I know right!? Hey hey hey, I real quick. Pull my finger,” said Cliff.

“I am  _ not-- _ ”

“Heta, pull my finger,” said Cliff. She did, and Cliff let out what sounded like a fart passed between two cymbals.

“OH MY GOD I CAN FART AGAIN” said Cliff, “THIS IS THE GREATEST DAY OF MY LIFE!”

Jyri put a hand on Cliff’s shoulder, “Laddie, if I knew it’d make you that happy I’d’ve let you have it from the start.”

Cliff’s mouth fell open. “No, no I couldn’t.”

“I insist. It’s the least we can pay you for those magnificent zip ties… but.”

“Oh, do I have to like sign something? Or pay you? I mean, I don’t have any money but I’m sure the Chief--”

“Our automatons work with only few hours of Asgard’s or Svartalfheim’s light, but Midgard’s light is too puny to power something like this. Which means if you keep it, you’ll need to be staying either here or in Asgard.”

Cliff’s face fell. “I knew there’d be something,” he muttered.

“Hey, Cliff,” said Vic, “You don’t have to decide anything right now. Jyri, what’s the range on this thing?”

“A thousand feet from the brain,” he said.

“Could you separate Cliff’s head and work on the rest of his body?”

“...where are you going with this laddie?” asked Heta.

“If we took Cliff’s head with us, he could come back with me to Asgard and take care of a few things while you work, right?” said Vic.

Jyri scratched his beard. “I suppose. But you’ll need a bifrost to get there.”

“Ok. Um… you have your own bifrost access, right? Could we use yours?”

“No! What, you think rainbows just grow on trees?” said Heta, but Jyri held up a hand to silence her.

“How about a trade?” said Jyri slyly.

“What do you have in mind?”

“You took a bifrost to Asgard to begin with, aye?” said Jyri, “That’ll mean you’ve got a rune circle now. When all of this is over, pile the circle up with as many zip ties and rolls of duct tape as you can fit in it. Then shout ‘Jyri! Your order’s here!’ and we’ll take the lot.”

Vic laughed and they shook on it.

“And where would you like to go masters Cliff and Vic?” Heta grumbled. She clearly thought they were getting the worse end of the deal.

“Can you take us directly into Valhalla? Preferably wherever Odin is?” said Vic.

Heta made a sour face. “She won’t like that.”

“Who, Odin’s wife?”

Heta laughed, “Oh, don’t let Frigg hear you say that. I meant Valhalla, laddie.”

“Valhalla’s a she?” said Cliff.

“I told you calling Valhalla a building was like calling Yggdrasil a tree,” she said.

“Yggdrasil, the great tree connecting the nine realms,” said Vic, clearly proud of his newfound knowledge.

Heta rolled her eyes. “How a people as daft as you ever came up with something like a zip tie I’ll never know. Give us a mo’ to separate his head and you’ll be on your way.”

Jyri and Heta worked quickly and soon Cliff was holding his own head. As they walked to the rune circle outside, Cliff kept glancing at it. He knew how easy it would be for him to make a life in Asgard or Svart-- wherever this place was. Hell, he probably already had a job lined up with Jyri contracting him to teach redneck engineering to all of his apprentices. He’d make new friends, maybe get his own place, meet someone--

Cliff shook his (not disembodied) head. He couldn’t think about that now. Jane was in danger. Jane could die. He could think about all of this once Jane was safe.

Vic and Cliff stepped into the glowing rune circle… and were promptly intercepted by a giant squirrel.


	9. Chapter 9

Larry stood outside of Heimdall’s house, an Asgardian flower he didn’t recognize in his lapel. “It might help and it certainly can’t hurt,” Rita had said when she placed it on his coat as she walked him through… what was it? “Posture and Poise”? The last hour was a bit of a blur and it was all Larry could do to keep Rita’s thousand rules in his head - don’t cough, sneeze, belch or fart, laugh at every single joke he makes no matter how stupid it is, don’t ask him about his mother, never eat anything bigger than a cookie with your hands in his presence.

Larry sighed and thought back to this morning. He remembered asking the negative spirit if it wanted to deal with whatever was going on with Jane so he could get another few hours sleep. He remembered how soft his bed was, how warm his blankets were.

He bitterly,  _ bitterly _ wished the negative spirit had said yes.

Larry pretended there was a marionette string tied to the back of his head holding his whole body in a straight line, like he’d just been taught, as he strode through the front gate and knocked on the door. Then he put his hands on his hips. Then he put his hands on his sides. Then he put one hand on the door frame and leaned on it. He was in the middle of adjusting his pose again when Heimdall opened the door, which gave him the impression of randomly holding one arm over his head.

“What do  _ you _ want Midgardian?” asked Heimdall.

Larry tried to say “I was just thinking of you, can I come in?” like Rita suggested, but “Um, hi” got thrown in. What came out of his mouth was, “I was just hi. Can I come in?”

Heimdall narrowed his eyes. “You were just high?”

Larry laughed maniacally. “You’re so funny, Heimdall,” he said as he tried (and failed) to keep the panic out of his voice.

Heimdall pursed his lips and sighed. “Which one are you? What’s your name?” he asked.

“I’m ah, Larry.”

“Well, ah-Larry, if you’re going to try to fuck me for a bifrost you might as well do it inside where we’ll both be comfortable.”

Every single alarm in Larry’s head started screaming “ABORT ABORT ABORT,” but then Heimdall laughed.

“It’s a joke you idiot. Why don’t you come inside, Larry?”

Larry contemplated just hopping back over the fence, running away and never seeing Heimdall or Rita or any other living creature ever again. Just him and the negative spirit, living off the land. But he knew Rita and the others would track him down eventually. They’d followed Jane all the way to Asgard, they’d follow him too. Besides, he didn’t have a lead room where he could change his bandages (he’d thought this through pretty thoroughly on the walk to Heimdall’s house). He forced his jaw to unclench and walked through the door, silently begging his own God to just let him die here and now.

“Wipe your shoes, please,” said Heimdall over his shoulder as he went into the kitchen. “I’ve got dwarven automatons to clean but I’m trying to keep the carpet looking fresh.”

Larry looked around. It was a small and tidy house with not much remarkable about it… except the two… three… five cats lounging around various places in the living room.

“Coffee? Tea?” came Heimdall from the kitchen.

“Uh, coffee please,” said Larry as he sat down on the couch. He went to grab a fluffy white pillow, before realizing it was a fluffy white cat, which reacted with a hiss.

“Don’t mind Glinda, she’s harmless but doesn’t like being disturbed from her spot on the couch. If you’re looking for a nice pet, Phantom will probably be coming up to you for scritches any second now.”

Sure enough, a black cat with a white patch over half of its face approached him on the couch. Larry scratched behind his ears. He’d always wanted to get a cat at the manor, but the Chief was allergic and it was his house.

Heimdall came back into the living room carrying a tea tray with two steaming mugs, a creamer, and sugar bowl.

“Sugar?”

“No, I can’t eat anything while my bandages are on. I just like to smell it.”

“Hm, alright then.”

Heimdall took a sip of his coffee, Larry took a sniff of his, and he relaxed a bit. This wasn’t so bad. Maybe he had this after all.

“Alright, Larry,” said Heimdall, “now that your shoulders are no longer touching your ears, why don’t you tell me why you need a bifrost so badly you were willing to try to seduce me for one?”

Larry froze.

“Oh, there you go again, clenching so hard it’s like you’re making diamonds in your ass,” said Heimdall, as one of his cats jumped on his lap. “Look, I’m sorry I chewed you out this morning, I know you’re a Midgardian and you probably think Ragnarok is a hair metal band, but it really was very dangerous what you did. And I didn’t anticipate you’d be at my door a few hours later trying to put the worst moves on me I’ve ever seen.”

“Really?” said Larry, meaning to ask about the danger.

“Well, not the  _ worst  _ moves,” said Heimdall, thinking Larry meant his ‘moves.’ “One time Loki wanted a bifrost to Jotunheim after they’d used up their quota, and they forgot they were still in their horse form and tried to give me a seductive whinny to get one,”

Larry laughed despite himself, “Seriously?”

“Absolutely!” said Heimdall, “And if you think  _ that _ ’s wild, wait till I tell you the goat story.”

Larry had no idea how long they talked. Heimdall told Larry about all the gossip that had happened since the Norse wrote down their original stories, and about his job and his cats and his trips to New York and London to see musicals (he’d seen Hamilton over 100 times). Larry told Heimdall about his life before and after the accident, his friends, his orchids, and Jane’s predicament that had led them here in the first place.

“Oh  _ gods _ , fucking Odin and his stupid Odin’s day child project,” said Heimdall rolling his eyes, his now cold coffee long forgotten next to Larry’s. “I mean, she doesn’t have a chance, but I hope she kicks his ass a little before it’s over. The man deserves it.”

“Are you sure she’s going to lose? Jane’s a fighter.”

“She can fight all she wants, she’s not killing Odin. Loki’s been trying for five thousand years and hasn’t succeeded yet, and they’re the god of assholes.”

Larry chuckled.

“See? Isn’t it nice laughing at a man’s jokes because they’re funny, not because you think he wants you to laugh at them?”

“Yeah, it is,” said Larry.

Heimdall leaned forward. “You want to know why I let you in the house, Larry?”

Larry stopped himself from leaning forward too. “Why?” he asked.

“I know what your people did to their gays until very recently, and I know the look of one of them who’s been through enough horror that anything gay just makes him terrified. I can’t say I’ve been there since Asgard’s been pretty down with every letter of the LGBT alphabet soup from day one, but I’ve been around New York and London’s gay scenes long enough to recognize it when I see it.”

Heimdall stood up and started piling the various coffee accoutrements on the tray. “I let you in the house, Larry, because I had a  _ hunch _ .”

“A hunch?” said Larry as he followed Heimdall into the kitchen.

“Mmhmm,” said Heimdall as he waved his hand. In the background, a series of small golden creatures Larry had assumed were knicknacks came to life and started scrubbing the things in the sink. But Larry’s attention was on Heimdall, who he just realized was standing very close to him.

“I had a hunch that given the chance, and maybe lower stakes, good coffee and a soft cat, you would shine, Larry. And you did. You charmed an Asgardian god into lending you a bifrost. You’re really something when you’re not stuck in your own head, did you know that?”

Larry felt his face get hot under the bandages. He had a sudden impulse to put his hand on Heimdall’s face, and that impulse was enough to trip the familiar DANGER klaxons in his head and he started feeling panic rising in his chest. Heimdall must’ve noticed something, because he stepped back and crossed his arms.

“Well, one step at a time I guess. Go outside and tell Rita to stop hiding in my azaleas. I want to talk to both of you before I lend you a bifrost.”

Larry looked over Heimdall’s shoulder and sure enough, there was Rita peeking over the azalea bush, looking sunburned and irritated. Larry went out the back door from the kitchen to the yard and said, “Whatever happened to ‘I have every confidence in you to pull this off?’”

“Trust but verify,” said Rita, removing an azalea twig that had caught on her skirt, “Have you been kicked out? It looked like you were about to seal the deal, what happened?”

Heimdall stepped out behind Larry. “What happened was Heimdall realized time wasn’t on your side and as much as he’d love to hear more about Larry’s orchids, you needed to get things going if you were going to save your friend.”

Rita was clearly about to react with shock that Larry had talked about his  _ orchids _ , but Heimdall pressed on. “Larry said you not only failed at convincing your friend to back down but managed to get kicked out of Valhalla in the effort, which is astonishing considering whatever you did was somehow more offensive than what a million dead Midgardian warriors do every day. Ordinarily I’d say to try to make up with her but Valhalla’s grudges can last decades and Odin’s fighting your friend tomorrow morning. I’ll summon a bifrost into her mead hall so you can talk to Odin; your best bet is to convince him not to fight Jane and send you all home.”

“That’s what we figured,” said Larry, “but if Valhalla is sentient, won’t she notice we’re… um… inside her?”

“Valhalla’s so busy she doesn’t usually bother with or even notice specific people unless they’re really making a mess. Keep your head down and stick to talking with Odin only and she probably won’t notice you’re there. I’ve got a private rune circle in my backyard over here. We’d better get going if you want to catch Odin while he’s in a good mood. It wouldn’t be out of character for him to pick a fight with someone at a pre-fight feast so that he can have another pre-fight feast tomorrow.”

Larry turned toward where Heimdall indicated the rune circle was but felt a warm hand on his shoulder. He turned, and Heimdall was there with what looked like a blue aster flower in his hand, apparently plucked from a small patch of the flowers next to him.

“That flower in your lapel is starweed. Pretty, but a couple of hours after being picked it explodes in a puff of pollen you’ll never wash out of your coat. May I?”

Larry nodded, and Heimdall replaced the starweed with the aster.

“You know in Midgard, asters are for patience. If I didn’t know better I’d read into that.”

“It’s a good thing you do know better then. I was just trying to bring out your eyes.”

Larry started. “You can see them?”

“Didn’t you say you took that Norse mythology class? I’m Heimdall. It’s my job to watch for Ragnarok. I can see a frost giant a thousand miles away through rock and wood and any other obstacle. You think those goggles will stop me from seeing your beautiful blue eyes?”

Larry wasn’t sure what he was about to do when Rita gave a small cough. “I’m sorry to interrupt but, but…”

“Yes, you’re right,” said Heimdall, and Larry wasn’t sure but he could’ve sworn he spotted a blush. They all walked over to the rune circle and Larry noticed Rita kept giving him pointed looks.

“What?” said Larry as Heimdall opened a bifrost.

“Well  _ done _ Larry,” she said quietly as she stepped into the circle and vanished behind a curtain of light.

Larry glanced at Heimdall, then quirked a grin and followed.

Both Larry and Rita were immediately intercepted by a giant squirrel.


	10. Chapter 10

If you were to ask someone to apply human moral values to animals, most people would say dogs are loyal, panthers are graceful, and squirrels are industrious. What most people don’t know, or at least don’t think to extrapolate, is that these species only have these traits because of their short lifespans and necessity to reproduce, and if they  _ didn’t _ have a short lifespan, the opposite would most likely be true. Dogs that live forever can’t be loyal to the same person, and so the immortal dogs that exist are usually pretty disloyal fuckers. The same goes for panthers that have the immortal assurance they don’t need to catch prey or care what other panthers think of their potential to do so. And squirrels? If you gave a squirrel eternal life, it would immediately become the laziest fucker you  _ ever _ saw.

Which is why Ratatoskr was positively  _ furious _ that he was  _ busy _ .

It wasn’t entirely true that Ratatoskr  _ never _ worked. It was just that his job wasn’t really  _ work _ per se. He was the giant squirrel of Yggdrasil. It was his job to climb to the top of the tree and tell Orn, the giant eagle who lived at the top, that Nidhogg, the giant serpent who lived at the bottom, was talking shit about him, with a few of his own creative insults thrown in. Then he had to climb to the bottom and say the same thing to Nidhogg about Orn. That’s not even a job. That’s a lifestyle, and one that suited Ratatoskr  _ perfectly _ .   
  
And when Ratatoskr overheard a conversation between a certain trickster god asshole and a certain Midgardian dipshit that meant the life he’d been living for thousands of years was danger, his first thought was  _ fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck _ not because his lifestyle was in jeopardy, but because he knew he’d have to expend effort to get his lifestyle  _ out _ of jeopardy. And  _ boy _ did he resent it.

The first order of business was finding out about this Midgardian turd blossom, Jane. That was easy - all of the knowledge of the universe is somewhere in Yggdrasil and Ratatoskr knew it better than anyone. A hop, skip and a jump to the right knot on the tree and BAM - he had a good sense of who she was and what was her deal (and wow, even a cynical dipshit like Ratatoskr had to say “poor kid” to a backstory like  _ that _ ). The second order of business was tracking down the people who could stop her from fighting Odin. The most likely candidate, some cum bucket she called the Chief, turned out to be trapped in the mother fuckin  _ whitespace _ of all places, way out of Ratatoskr’s reach. That meant he was stuck with the second best option, which was the turd herd she lived with and loved more than anyone on earth, although fuck if he knew why. Looked like a bunch of pathetic losers to him.

Lucky for him, all four of them were in either Asgard or Svartalfheim, and it looked like they were all taking bifrosts  _ to the same place at the same time _ , almost like it was written in a script. So it was just a matter of intercepting their bifrosts and redirecting them to the same branch where Loki had spoken to Jane only a few hours ago. If he had to do work at least it was  _ simple _ work.

Ratatoskr gave them a moment to get their bearings. They were only Midgardians after all. They were easily confused, quickly frightened and not very bright.

“Uhhh… what?” asked the one called Cliff, stupidly.

“I um… Vic? And who’re you? Why’re you carrying Cliff’s head?” asked the one called Larry, stupidly.

“Oh I’m Cliff, I just have a temporary upgrade while they put my body back together and I have to carry my old head while I have it. Well. It may be permanent. I just-- we don’t have to talk about it now.”

“Wow, you’re right about an upgrade,” said the one called Rita, stupidly, “but to the matter at hand. Where are we?”

“D’you think this is just another part of Valhalla that we didn’t see before?” asked the one called Vic,  _ very  _ stupidly.

Ratatoskr decided he’d given them long enough and hopped down to where they could see him, “‘Fraid not, dum dums. This is Yggdrasil, the big ass tree of the universe. Had to intercept your bifrosts to talk to you a minute, and let me tell you it was a  _ pain in my ass _ .”

All of the Midgardians stared at him stupidly.

“You’re… ok, you know what? Sure. A giant talking squirrel intercepted our magic rainbow portals to take us to a universe tree. Why not?” said Cliff with surprising intelligence.

“Rata-something right?” said Larry also with surprising intelligence.

“Ratatoskr, absolutely fucking  _ not  _ at your service,” said Ratatoskr. “Now, listen up you discount X-Men ‘cause I only want to say this once and I’m already pissed I have to say it at all. Your friend Jane’s gonna fight Odin soon, and thanks to the intervention of a certain gender-fucked dipshit she might actually have a chance. You all need to make sure she absolutely does  _ not _ get that chance.”

“Whaaaaat the fuck are you even talking about? X-men?” said Cliff, who’d gone back to being stupid.

“Oh right, that’s the other universe. Discount Justice League then. Are you happy now, you dictionary entry for ‘daddy issue’?”

Cliff looked like he was going start something but both Vic and Larry put their hands on his chest to stop him.

“Hurling insults is literally all he does, don’t take it personally,” said Larry.

“It’s my job for Orn and Nidhogg. For you I’ll do it for free, you mucus-munching fartknocker.”

“Ok,” said Rita quickly before things could escalate, “Go back to the part where Jane has a chance at beating Odin, and we need to stop her.”

Ratatoskr sighed. Midgardians couldn’t just know what they needed to know, they always had to know the  _ how _ and the  _ why _ and the  _ what if _ . How a species this pathetic evolved to have dominion over squirrels he’d never know. Well, he would know if he went to that part of Yggdrasil, but that would require  _ effort _ .

“Ok, ok, let me break this down for you, you walking billboards for birth control. You all know Loki, right? Asgardian god of general fuckery? Smarter than you idiots but by about as much as a bird flying into a window is smarter than a bird flying into a wall. Anyway, that slimy syphilitic dick sore figured out Odin’s ravens, the ones that tell him everything that’s happening everywhere, don’t stop by this branch of Yggdrasil because Odin doesn’t like thinking about what happened here, and I swear to gods if one of you asks what happened here I am throwing you off the tree, it’s not important. So Loki does all their plotting out here, usually while I’m not far away because the yellow-bellied cocksucker can’t be bothered to check they’re alone.”

“I think you’d get to the point faster if you cut out a few of the insults,” said Rita stupidly.

“Fuck off, dollar store Elizabeth Taylor,” fired Ratatoskr.

Larry had to physically restrain her for that one and Ratatoskr grinned. He needed to get new people out here more often - there were only so many ways you could make fun of a bird and a snake.

“Anyway, relevant Loki plot number one: they correctly told Jane here a few hours ago that she can kill Odin with hanging. Relevant plot number two: a couple thousand years ago Loki got Odin to boast that if he died in combat before Ragnarok, Loki could have the throne instead of Thor.”

“Is that it? Why does that matter to  _ us _ ,” said Vic.

“I’m getting there, teen shite-an. Relevant plot number three: among Loki’s many terrible ideas for when they get the powers of the ruler of Asgard is  _ burning down Yggdrasil _ , just to see what would happen. Now, Yggdrasil has its roots and branches allllll through your precious Midgard and the other nine realms. Are you so spectacularly obtuse that I have to spell out what’ll happen to your universe if one of the fundamental forces holding it together suddenly  _ doesn’t _ ?”

Ratatoskr watched the horror dawn over all of their faces like kindergartners who’d just watched a hawk take off with the class gerbil.

“Fuck,” said Cliff.

“I’ll take things Cliff’s parents never should have done for two hundred, Alex,” said Ratatoskr.

“Oh fuck off, you don’t even know what Jeopardy  _ is _ ,” said Cliff angrily.

Ratatoskr was about to respond with some top shelf insults when Vic jumped in.

“Thank you for telling us, Ratatoskr. Can you get us to Valhalla now?”

“That huge cranny in the tree behind you, the one big enough to be your mother’s pussy, that’ll take you somewhere inside Valhalla. The pre-fight feast is probably starting now and Odin and Jane will be there. I don’t fucking care whether you stop the fight or kill Jane but  _ Odin cannot die _ got it? Anyway, all the warriors will be walking to the mead hall, so just follow the crowd. Think you can manage that, shitlickers?”

“Yes. One last question - how did you find us?” asked Vic.

“Nope, already spelled out in the exposition and this reader’s got the attention span of a gnat so I’m not repeating it.  _ And _ I’ve got to get to the other universe to antagonize Squirrel Girl now. I’ve no fucking idea why you shitty Midgardians can’t stop writing me and just let me live in peace. Anyway, you better get to it, douche patrol.”

And with that, Ratatoskr hopped off the branch and out of the narrative control of this chapter before it could wrap up nicely.

Lazy prick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The eagle at the top of Yggdrasil is never named in any of the surviving ancient Norse mythology texts, so I googled what would pass for the ancient Norse word for "eagle," anglicized it, and came up with "Orn."
> 
> Please don't tell the word police. I've already got two strikes on my creative license.


	11. Chapter 11

Vic couldn’t figure out where they’d gone wrong.

They had stuck with the plan they made in the tunnel to Valhalla. They hadn’t fucked up even _ once _ . They had followed the crowd to the mead hall, made their way to Odin’s table. The old bastard was sitting at the ass end of the hall looking like a burly mall Santa had started a biker bar, with his eye patch and tattoos running all up and down his arms. His wife Frigg had been on his right and an empty chair and then Sif was on his left (“My firstborn son is in another universe at present” he’d said). Loki was next to Frigg, looking _ very _ pleased with themself at the plot the team had come to foil. They had all bowed (even Cliff!) before asking to be honored with dinner in his presence. Vic thought they were done for when Odin made a crack about crumpling new Cliff into a ball too but _ he had laughed it off _ (well, his growl had sounded enough like laughter to fool Odin anyway). Cliff had sat as far away from Odin as politeness permitted, which positioned him perfectly to distract Loki with tales of his favorite high school pranks so the others could get to work on Odin. Larry and Vic had flattered Odin’s ego with what they knew of his wisdom and exploits, which wasn’t much but Odin had been more than happy to supply more details. Rita had laughed at every single one of Odin’s stupid jokes, and for the first time today the strategy had actually _ worked. _

They had asked why a god of such bravery and strength was so concerned with the challenge of a puny little Midgardian. Jane was just a troubled little girl, and crushing her would not even be a deed worth _ noting _ let alone writing songs about. The fight would be over before it even began, and then the great warriors of Valhalla would be disappointed and bored. Of course _ Jane _ wanted to fight. She was a frog swelling her throat who didn’t understand how easily she’d be crushed under Odin’s heel. There was no great honor in a victory like _ that. _ And finally, Odin had agreed.

“Midgardians,” said Odin, stroking the feathers of one of several ravens perched on his chair, “you have wisdom yet to share with us all. Tonight let us not feast to glory in battle but to understanding and pity for the weak and the broken. Such a shame that Jane had not the mettle to prove a true hero under the influence of my spell, but it’s natural that some of a father’s children will be disappointments,” he had looked pointedly at Loki, who was taking notes from Cliff on the many practical joke applications of a roll of plastic wrap.

“Come, let us seek out Jane and I will give her my blessing to leave not in disgrace but in compassion. I’m afraid some disgrace will follow her, but more disgrace will follow me for killing one as pathetic as she,” said Odin. Then he looked down the table to the spot where Jane should have been sitting in the challenger’s chair, and saw it was empty.

In hindsight, that was the first indicator they were fucked.

“Heimdall! Your presence is requested by the allfather!” shouted Odin.

Within seconds, a bifrost had opened in front of Odin and out stepped an absolutely tiny blonde man. His hair was wet and he was wearing nothing but a bath towel and a horn strapped to his back. Larry pulled on his collar.

“My king,” said Heimdall with a bow, “what new threat that escapes my watch has come to Asgard? Do I have time to find armor and a weapon?”

“Be at ease, Heimdall, there is no threat. I need you to find Jane of Many Names. I wish to speak with her, and she is not here.”

A series of emotions passed over Heimdall’s face in quick succession. “With respect, my king, we talked about this.”

“About finding my socks? But this is about finding a _ person _.”

“Does the allfather not have ravens for this purpose?” asked Heimdall through gritted teeth.

“You’re faster.”

Heimdall spent a moment in furious silence before Larry said, “Heimdall, my friends and I have spoken with the allfather and he has agreed to cancel his fight with our friend Jane. Would… would you please do this?”

Vic didn’t know how or why, but Heimdall backed down from the retort he’d clearly been about to make. He’d given a nod (to Larry, not Odin), and looked around Valhalla, before gasping and turning bright red.

“She… ah…” he stammered.

“Speak up, man, where is she?”

Heimdall looked like he’d rather be literally anywhere else.

“My king, she is otherwise occupied. Perhaps this can wait until--”

“No, it is urgent. Is she in Valhalla?”

“...yes, but--”

“Valhalla! Bring Jane of Many Names to my presence!”

“My king I wouldn’t--”

But it was too late. There was Jane, on the floor in front of them… wearing bondage gear… mid-orgasm.

When she was finished, Jane looked around the stunned silent hall. There was a shimmer and she said, “Fucking hell, Scarlet Harlot, I _ told _ you it was a bad idea.”

There was another shimmer and what must have been the Scarlet Harlot said, “But we were having so much _ fun _. So much dungeon! So many toys!”

“Jane of Many Names, daughter of Odin’s day--” began Odin.

“Shut up dickface, I’ll be back in two minutes,” said Jane (Flit?) as she shimmered and then disappeared.

An excruciatingly awkward two minutes later, Jane was back in the mead hall in her normal clothes, carrying a large coil of rope. 

“That’s better ,” said Jane. As she threw the coil of rope on the ground in front of her, Odin’s eyes followed it in anger (or was it fear?). “Now what is it you wanted you piece of shit?”

Vic decided it was best if he took it from here. “Jane, Odin has refused to fight you. We’re going home.”

Jane laughed. “Fucking figures. Do you know why I was in that sex dungeon in the first place? It turns out, that’s the only place in Valhalla with any rope!”

“Jane,” said Larry warningly.

“And _ why _ is the sex dungeon the _ only _ place in Valhalla with any rope?” Jane continued, “I’ll _ tell _you why.”

“Jane please,” pleaded Rita.

“Because _ Odin is a fucking coward _ , that’s why,” said Jane, “it’s _ also _ why we’re throwing down in an open-air arena. No ceiling beams or tree branches in an open air arena are there fuckface?”

Odin stood up. “How _ dare _ you imply I’m a coward, you impertinent child!” he shouted.

“Oh I’m not _ implying _ , I’m _ saying it _ ,” spat Jane. “Odin! Is! A! Coward! And if he wants to prove otherwise, he will have to _ fight _ me. Right here, right now. And Valhalla can’t help you.”

There was a pause. Vic hail mary-ed. “Odin, she doesn’t know--”

Odin held up a hand to silence him.

“Valhalla, clear the tables, draw a circle, and don’t interfere with what’s about to happen. Frigg, bring me my armor.”

Rita and Larry had stayed with Odin try to get him to reconsider. Vic and Cliff had gone to Jane and, after a tense moment when Jane thought gold-Cliff had killed robot-Cliff and was carrying around his head for fun, had tried to reason with her.

“Jane, listen to me, Loki is _ using _ you,” said Cliff, “If you win, Loki gets the throne and earth gets fucked sideways.”

Hammerhead said, “Not my fucking problem, Cliff.”

“Jane, there’s no good outcome here,” said Vic, “please let us take you home.”

“So that dipshit can keep hurting kids? I don’t fucking think so,” said Hammerhead.

“...is this still about Odin?” asked Cliff.

That had been the wrong thing to say. There was a shimmer and before either of them could react, Jane (one of her) was moving faster than Grid could even track. Before they knew it, they were tied to chairs at the edge of the circle.

“S-s-sorry, sirs,” said Penny Farthing, “Th-they made me… th-they…”

With a shimmer, Flit said, “And now we need more rope,” and disappeared.

And now it was 20 minutes later. Jane had returned with another coil of rope, Odin was wearing his armor, and Frigg was standing between them. All around the edge of the circle that contained them were warriors taking bets (no one was betting Jane would win, but they were guessing if she’d be impaled on Odin’s spear, have her head smashed in by Odin’s fist, or a whole host of other gruesome ways to die).

Vic had been replaying the events over and over in his mind. They’d done everything right. The universe had just been determined to fuck them over. Well, maybe not the universe. Maybe just Jane. Fucking Jane.

So when Frigg lowered her arm and Jane immediately started getting absolutely _ pummelled _, it took Vic a moment before he remembered he didn’t want this to happen to her.

“There has to be something else we can do,” said Cliff for the millionth time since they’d been tied up. He’d been alternating that and “Jane!” over and over again. It didn’t take a genius to figure out Cliff was really watching his daughter get the shit kicked out of her. Vic couldn’t understand, but he could sympathize. He thought about his father. He wondered what his father would be doing if it were him in the ring.

“Grid,” he said, “look around the room. Is there anything we can use to break free? Anything we could be doing to stop this fight?” he said.

“Running analysis” said Grid and it started focusing on various objects in Vic’s line of vision and calculating their potential as tools to help. One of the ones Grid focused on and quickly discarded was Vic’s one-eyed Asgard light-glasses. Two memories stirred with stunning alacrity.

In the first, he was seventeen. It had been a year since the accident, and Niles had just gotten him a new glass eye.

“Ok, control first,” said his father as he switched the robotic eye off.

“Dad, we both know I’m gonna be garbage with one eye,” said an impatient teenage Vic.

“Science without a control group isn’t science, it’s just messing around,” said Silas seriously, “Now, try to catch the baseball.”

Vic had tried. Vic had failed. He’d misjudged the distance.

In the other memory, he was facing Lady Sif as she said, “Victor, son of Silas, you can use my father in law’s glasses.”

“Jane!” Vic shouted. “Jane, I know how to beat him!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Penny Farthing doesn't have any canonical powers as far as I could see, but I figured her craven nature meant it made sense she could run away quickly.


	12. Chapter 12

Odin had been too strong for Hammerhead. Too scary for Penny. Too fast for Flit. Too powerful for the secretary. Immune to Lucy’s electricity, Karen’s love spell, Dr. Harrison’s influence, Katy’s fire. The others had seen all of this and then suddenly become very busy with their corner of the underground. Hammerhead was ready for another go, but Jane knew she’d be overpowered. So she was lying the dirt, in pain, and telling herself she was in too much pain to cry as tears streamed down her face.

“Rise, Jane of Many Names,” said Odin, “You have fought valiantly. It is time to make Valhalla your permanent home.”

Jane closed her eyes and tried to take a deep breath, then stopped when her broken ribs protested. Everyone was shouting. Mostly cheering Odin. Somewhere, someone was shouting her name.

“Jane! Jane, I know how to beat him!”

Jane opened her eyes. Well, her eye. One was starting to swell shut.

“Jane get Silvertongue! He only has one eye, his depth perception is shit!”

Down in the underground, Silvertongue said, “No. Get someone else.”

“Get your stupid ass out there, Silvertongue,” said Hammerhead.

“Get. Someone.  _ Else _ .” said Silvertongue.

“We’re going to fucking DIE you moron!” said Hammerhead.

“We will if you don’t find someone else to get up there,” said Silvertongue, “because I’m not going.”

And then a voice with an high-class British accent had said, “Oh for heaven’s  _ sake _ ”... and Mrs. Potts was at the wheel.

“Oh my, that does smart,” she said, getting to her feet.

“Jane of Many Names, daughter of Odin’s day, may Valhalla greet you with open arms,” said Odin as he raised his spear.

“Now I think that’s quite enough of that, dearie,” said Mrs. Potts, “All this can wait a moment, can’t it?” Suddenly there were tea cups in her hands, “Spot of tea before the end? You’ll have to supply the tea, I’m afraid, but I’ve plenty of cups.”

Odin stared at her blankly.

“Alright, suit yourself,” she said, and she threw her first tea cup at Odin.

Odin raised his small forearm shield to block, but too late. The first cup smashed him square in the face. The second hit him in the gut. Mrs. Potts smiled. All this time she’d been watching in dismay every Wednesday as Jane had smashed her beautifully, lovingly created plates. It hadn’t crossed her mind to try smashing them herself. And now she was… well, it felt good. Brilliant, actually. Liberating.

Mrs. Potts was rather enjoying watching Odin try and fail to block her gravy boats, vases and sugar bowls, until her lumbago began to act up.

“Get a couple of big tall stacks of plates, Mrs. Potts,” said Penny Farthing, “I’ve got it from here.”

She had, and Penny had hurled all of them in quick succession. Odin’s face, arms and legs were quickly getting cut up pretty badly by the shards of pottery. His nose even looked broken.

“That’s all of them,” said Penny breathing fast, “I need more Mrs. Potts.”

“Oh dear, I’m terribly sorry,” said Mrs. Potts, “it’ll take me some time to make more. You know I hand paint every one in the underground.”

“Wh- what?” said Penny, “B-but I c-can’t…”

Odin had been crouching under the onslaught, but he was rising now.

“Oh n-n-n-n-no,” said Penny, fleeing back to the underground and shoving Jane up front.

“Silvertongue! I think that’s your fucking cue!” she shouted.

“I told you, I’m not--”

Mrs. Potts grabbed Silvertongue by the ear and dragged her to the train. “I know the Secretary usually does discipline down here,” said Mrs. Potts, “But really, dear, it’s time to buck up and show us all what you’re made of.”

S ilvertongue was not happy about being at the wheel when Odin charged and pinned her to the ground with his knee.

“Time to die, daughter of Odin’s day,” said Odin as he raised his spear.

“GO TO HELL, DADDY,” said Silvertongue.

Odin tried to reach for the words before they could hurt him, but missed. “GO TO” clamped onto his left shoulder. “HELL, DADDY” clamped onto his right. They both raised him off the ground. Odin tried to throw his spear, but it was deflected with a deft, “YOU’VE DONE ENOUGH” that caught it midair and threw it to the ground.

“I’M GOING TO ENJOY THIS” pinned Odin’s arms behind his back, and Silvertongue tied his hands with one piece of rope and listened to Jack Straw tell her how to tie a noose with another piece. Soon it was around Odin’s neck, and Hammerhead threw its loose end over the ceiling beam. The loud roar of the crowd had dimmed to a panicked chatter. Loki had a positively infernal grin on their face.

“This can’t be happening, you can’t do this,” said Odin who was starting to panic himself.

“Shut up you dirty old man,” said Hammerhead, who pulled the rope, hoisting Odin several feet into the air. Hammerhead tied one end to a heavy oak table, then stood in front of the frantic Odin, whose toes were dancing in the air in front of her.

There was a shimmer, and Jane said, “Not so tough  _ now _ , you horrible, horrible man,” said Jane, who was crying for some reason. “I’m glad I can hang you ‘cause that means you can die  _ slow _ . After everything you did to me. Everything I had to become. Every time someone told me to get over what you did.”

Jane stopped wondering why she was crying because she stopped caring she was crying. “I was a  _ child _ . You were the  _ adult _ . I  _ trusted _ you and you  _ twisted _ it and made me-- made me--”

“Jane,” said an unfamiliar but familiar voice behind her, “I’m going to touch your shoulder.”

A hand was on her shoulder. And she just knew it was Cliff’s. And she fell to her knees and started to sob properly.


	13. Chapter 13

Cliff got on his knees next to Jane, put his arms around her, and just let her cry. He took a moment to take it all in. The soreness of his wrists, which had been tied until Larry had come up behind him and cut him free just moments ago. The sound of Jane’s sobs, which rang clearer than ever with his now perfect hearing. And most importantly the feel of her pulled against his chest. She was so  _ small _ . How could anyone ever have hurt her?

Cliff took it all in because he knew this was the last time he’d be able to feel a hug from his dau-- from Jane. Because when all of this over, he was going to return this body to the dwarves and go back to the manor. Jane couldn’t stay here, where Odin would be. And he needed Jane in his life, but more than that she needed him in hers. She’d had enough men in her life disappoint and disappear. He wasn’t going to be another one.

“Jane,” he said, “you’ve done so much. I’m so proud of you. Let me take it from here, ok?”

Jane looked at Cliff’s face. Her makeup was streaked with tears. “I miss the old you,” she said.

“Don’t worry, old me’ll be back before you know it,” said Cliff, “but first I gotta take care of the shitstain who crushed old me into a ball this morning. Can you let me do that, Jane? Can you let me take care of this for you?”

Jane gulped and nodded. Cliff gave her one last squeeze, impressing every sensation into his memory forever. And then he stood up and stepped toward Odin, whose face was turning purple. It looked like his neck hadn’t broken, which was a shame. He would’ve deserved it.

“Vic, get him a chair to stand on,” said Cliff.

Vic obliged, and Odin gasped for air. “Th- thank-” he started.

“Oh, don’t thank me yet you douche rocket,” said Cliff, “Bet you’re wishing you hadn’t crumpled me up this morning, huh?”

“I-- I--” stammered Odin, who was both still out of breath and quite terrified.

“Now listen you shitswizzle ‘cause I’m only gonna say this once,” said Cliff, “You have hurt a whole fucking  _ lot _ of people down where we live. And if you want to keep your life, you’re never going to hurt Jane or anyone else like her ever again. Got that dipshit?  _ Never again. _ ”

“I-I’ll take away Jane’s curse,” said Odin, “but that will mean taking her blessing as well.”

“Well then it’s a good thing Jane doesn’t need a  _ fucking thing _ from you, now isn’t it?” said Cliff, “But we’re not done here. You’re never going to put your curse on anyone else ever again. And you’re going to go to every single person in Midgard that you’ve fucked over with your shitty-ass gift and you’re going to take it away from them too.”

“I c-can’t--” stuttered Odin.

“Vic, blast one of the legs on that chair.”

“W-wait!” shouted Odin. And Cliff waited, with relish. Odin may not have been the piece of shit that  _ really _ hurt Jane, but he was one in a long line of people who had, and Cliff was  _ loving _ bringing the fucker to his knees.

“Didn’t I tell you you’re not going to hurt Jane  _ or anyone else _ ever again?” said Cliff, “What part of that did you not understand?”

“It-- it would take time,” said Odin.

“You have a year,” said Cliff. “And when that year is done, I’m coming back. And I’m bringing some rope of my own. And if you’re not done, I’m finishing the job Jane started.”

“You-- you  _ insect _ of a--” started Odin.

Cliff took away the chair and let Odin hang for a minute. When he replaced it, he said “I’m sorry, you were saying ‘I swear to follow the terms of your agreement, Clifford son of Cletus.’ and I interrupted you. How rude of me. Wanna try that again?”

Odin was  _ furious _ . “Heimdall! Frigg! Sif! Are you just--”

“Allfather, this is your fight,” said Sif, “it is not our place to interfere.”

“Well fine, let it be mine then,” said Loki who had clearly decided wherever this was going it wasn’t going to benefit them. Their foot hadn’t made contact with the dirt in the circle before a sonic canon blasted them to the ground, and both Rita’s stretched arm was pinning them to it.

Cliff reached for the chair.

“Alright!” said Odin, terrified, “Alright, you have an accord.”

“A little bit louder for the whole class, please,” said Odin.

“I will do as you ask, and if I don’t, you can hang me here. I swear it.” said Odin.

“And if I kill you, Thor will take your place,” said Odin.

“Y-yes? That was always going to happen,” said Odin, confused.

“Well then, it sounds like you and your other kid have a lot to catch up on,” said Cliff, “Rita, take the knife from Larry, reach up and cut him down please.”

Rita did, and Odin came crashing to the ground.

“I think we all learned a valuable lesson here today,” said Cliff.

“Wednesday’s suck?” offered Larry.

“Wednesdays  _ suck _ ,” said Cliff.

“My day is not over yet, Clifford son of Cletus,” said Odin as he got to his feet and picked up his spear, “And you did not say in your agreement that I could not kill you.”

And before anyone could react, Odin’s spear was through Cliff’s head. The room gasped. Jane screamed, “NO!” Then a head sitting on a chair 15 feet away said “Ow!”

Everyone looked toward Cliff’s original head. “Oh hey, you knocked me back to my real head. And I’ve got my voice back! Honestly I was getting kinda tired of sounding like James Earl Jones.”

“Really?” said Larry.

“Fuck no,” said Cliff, “I didn’t even get to say ‘Simmmbaaaaaa.’”

“WHY CAN’T YOU MIDGARDIANS JUST DIE?” shouted Odin, who pulled his spear from Cliff’s golden body and raised it again. Silvertongue leapt between them ready to throw down when Odin suddenly dropped the spear as though it were white hot.

“Ouch!” shouted Odin, “What have you done to my spear, Clifford!”

From the edge of the circle where Cliff hadn’t noticed them, Jyri and Heta stepped forward.

“Odin, allfather and fatherless,” said Jyri, “that spear was a gift from Dvalin, my own father. It was given on the expectation that it would be used for justice, not for petty revenge.”

“This does not concern you, dwarf,” spat Odin.

“Allfather, not only have you used a dwarven craft to destroy another dwarven craft, in violation of the agreement between Asgard and Svartalfheim that the works of our hands be treated with the veneration their artisanship demanded, but you have just attacked a master craftsman.”

“Um, what?” said Cliff.

“What!?” said Odin.

“In Master Cliff’s time with us, he demonstrated such an adept skill in creating and shaping works and invented such useful new tools for doing so that he was voted a master craftsman this afternoon by the guild. My apprentice and I came here to tell him the good news.”

Odin clenched his jaw and glared. “Clifford, son of Cletus, a dwarven master craftsman. Horse shit. I don’t believe it.”

“I tallied the vote myself,” said Heta, “Personally I’m with you, he doesn’t deserve it. But he’s got it. And not only will you not harm him with works of our creation, an attack on him is an attack on Svartalfheim.”

Odin, who had clearly never lost anything in his life, was at a complete loss for words. And then Frigg walked up to Oden and touched his arm.

“You said it yourself not an hour ago, my husband,” said Frigg, “the Midgardians have wisdom yet to share with us all.”

Odin sighed, “As always, you are right, Frigg my love. Come, let us feast to--”

A banner fell on Odin’s head.

“Ouch! Valhalla, what in Asgard--”

“Begging your pardon allfather,” said Heta, “but Valhalla’s already cleared out her feast at your request. She seems to have a very strong opinion on conjuring it up again.”

Odin threw up his hands, “Fine then! Jane, your gift has been withdrawn. Heimdall, take them wherever they want to go. Everybody else, fuck off, I am finished!”

And with that, Odin the wise stormed off like a petulant child, with Frigg and Sif running after him.

“You know,” said Jyri as he scratched his beard, “it’s around dinner time in Svartalfheim.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now the thrilling conclusion. Thank you all for reading. If you've got something nice to say, please leave a comment and a kudos. If you've got something mean to say, please google pictures of puppies until you're in a better mood and leave a nice comment instead.
> 
> Also, if you liked this, I've written a couple of other Doom Patrol fics too. Give'em a read!

There were so many things everyone didn’t know.

Neither Vic, Rita, Larry, Cliff or Jane knew much about what happened at what quickly became a party that night at Kahvio, the dwarven mead hall (which just meant “place where people eat” in dwarfish, because dwarves didn’t go for all that valor and honor crap). The next morning when Cliff and Larry woke up  _ extremely _ hung over, they just didn’t fucking know  _ how _ , or that the previous night the dwarves had heard of their inability to drink and they had quickly invented contraptions that had allowed them to do so.

Larry was both relieved and a bit disappointed that he didn’t wake up next to Heimdall the next morning. He didn’t know that Heimdall had left early, since he knew waking up together was way faster than Larry was comfortable with and even though they hadn’t… you know… it would’ve freaked him out. He didn’t know how long he had to wait for Larry to get comfortable dating a Norse god, but he wanted to find out.

Rita didn’t know who the dwarf was that she woke up next to. Or the other dwarf. Or the other dwarf. And Rita didn’t know how many years she’d have to put between herself and this morning to forget it but she was  _ determined _ to find out.

Cliff didn’t know how to tell Jyri and Heta that even though he was so grateful they’d worked so quickly getting his body back together that he could enjoy having it that night at the party and even though he was so honored to be a master smith now, he couldn’t stay in Svartalfheim. Jyri didn’t know how to tell Cliff that he’d made up the whole master smith thing just to stick it to Odin. Heta didn’t know how to tell Cliff he’d never gotten around to showing them how to chain zip ties.

Vic didn’t know how the fuck they’d managed to pull off the best possible ending like this when they’d fucked up so badly every step of the way. He also didn’t know what this meant for his Justice League aspirations. And he didn’t know that Wonder Woman, Batman, Superman and every other member of the Justice League had the same thought about their own fuck ups at least once a week, and he was in excellent company.

The negative spirit didn’t know that Valhalla was working up the courage to ask him out. It was good that he didn’t know it, because Valhalla worked on a different time schedule than everyone else and wouldn’t have the courage to do it for another 200 years, and the negative spirit was about as asexual and aromantic as they came.

Jane didn’t know what she was going to do about Larry. She’d never admit it even to herself that the stuff he’d said about her decisions ruining his and everyone else’s lives had been bothering her. Some of the nicer personalities had been whispering to each other trying to figure out if there was anything they could do about it.

And when a week later, Larry had come storming through the house looking Jane because his orchids had disappeared  _ again _ and he’d instead seen the dazzlingly brilliant, spanking new, dwarven-made greenhouse in the backyard, Larry didn’t know Mrs. Potts had spent the party drinking Jyri under the table on a bet in order to get it made for him. He’d assumed Heimdall sent it, which made them… what? Long-distance boyfriends now? Larry didn’t know. But he wanted to find out.

All of them knew that curse or no curse, it had been the best fucking Wednesday of their lives.


End file.
